


who the fuck was gonna believe me?

by suzannevales



Category: Sharp Objects (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-29
Updated: 2020-05-29
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:26:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24435079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suzannevales/pseuds/suzannevales
Summary: They preferred Adora, of course. Adora had always been the sweet one. Sweet and sad and lovely; it was hard not to want to wind up on Adora’s side. Everything about her begged defending. So, they hated Jackie on their own account but double for Adora. They didn’t understand how a “friend” could ever, ever imply the things that Jackie’s actions seemed to imply.Show based, book informed.
Kudos: 12





	who the fuck was gonna believe me?

When Jackie thinks of Marian Crellin she thinks of how small she was. Bird-boned and delicate with Adora’s white blonde hair and skin so fair you could almost see right through her. 

She remembers the way that her veins showed like sea green cobwebs painted all over, up and down the skinny arms and legs that stuck out of the pale blue polka dot speckled hospital gown. She remembers her smile and the way that it had lit her face and made her look so much less sick.

Though she’d like to forget, she remembers those days (few and far between) where Marian looked like any other child. Still too small and too fair but rowdy and well; chasing her sister. 

She remembers Adora, how beautiful she was. Always clicking in and out of the hospital on her high heels. Beautiful Adora with a full face of makeup and big trays of baked goods for the nurses; never a hair out of place.

Jackie still doesn’t understand how that staff could have been so fucking stupid. So god damn willfully blind. Mothers of sick children do not wear their Sunday Best to the hospital. They don’t come swathed in madonna blue, as if they’d studied paintings of martyrs in order to emulate them.

These images are fleeting though and Jackie doesn’t trust half of what it is that she thinks she remembers. After all, she’s been mixing her cocktails with so many handfuls of pills that she can hardly believe she remembers anything at all. Can’t even trust herself more than anyone else can. 

The only thing she knows she remembers with a painful sort of clarity is the thing she’s worked the hardest to forget (perhaps that is why it’s so stubbornly stuck). 

The day that she decided to stop trying to help Marian was an uncharacteristically grey day for the season, mid June. It was wet and miserable and she’d gone to the hospital again. The nurses didn’t like her much. she’d gone to grade school with a handful of them and they resented her for who she’d been at 9. Fair enough. Jackie hadn’t ever been particularly sweet and these women had managed to retain that same whiny, watery, boring quality to them that they’d had as girls. Jackie hated them for it as children and she hated them more for it grown. 

That was why they preferred Adora, of course. Adora had always been the sweet one. Sweet and sad and lovely, it was hard not to want to wind up on Adora’s side. Everything about her begged defending. So, they hated Jackie on their own account but double for Adora. 

They didn’t understand how a “friend” could ever, ever imply the things that Jackie’s actions seemed to imply. Of course, she was careful as she could be not to let on. She only ever said that well, her husband’s father was a doctor in St. Louis and if he could just see the chart then maybe he could help. He might know, he might see the things the doctors there had missed. After all Marian had been a patient there all her life. Perhaps familiarity had begun to cloud the doctors’ ability to distinguish and investigate presented symptoms.

She had tried her best to be charming and she was, in her way, but most people didn’t find her way so charming. “I just don’t see what the issue is? I’d just like to know what tests were run. Adora is a good friend of mine. I’m sure you know that. I love little Marian. I think of her as a niece,” She remembers smiling sweetly as she could. 

Back then, Jackie could still pass for put together. It was when her hair was still dark and curly, her lips red, her dresses fitted. She was more attractive then so she got away with more. “I just want to make sure that she’s receiving the best possible care, of course.” Another request denied.

She had clicked out to her car quickly, on the verge of tears that she flat refused to shed. She would not cry. Not where anyone could see her, anyway. Of course it was then that Alan Crellin found her, right outside the automatic doors of the hospital. Behind Jackie, the automatic double doors to the hospital closed with a mechanical whir and for a moment, the two of them just looked at each other under that threateningly grey sky. “Jackie,” it isn’t a greeting, almost accusatory right off the bat. “What are you doing here?”

“Well, hello to you too, Alan.” she tried to play it off with a smile and laugh. Alan looked, to Jackie, perpetually exhausted. He was turning a sort of sickly sort of yellow color. His hair and face were thinning some. He was not as handsome as he was three years ago. He looked at her, his blue eyes cold and distant behind his glasses. He did not smile. 

“Do you have any idea how upset Adora would be if she knew that you were here?” exasperated, like scolding a child. 

“What? I can’t visit my sick niece?” 

“She’s not your niece.” Alan was one of those men that didn’t have to raise his voice to let you know he’d like to hit you. He could say it flat, as if reciting a grocery list, but you could still see it in his yellow, weasely face. He had a quiet sort of menace. They looked at each other a moment longer in perfect silence, as Jackie’s smile slowly faded. “Go home, Jacqueline.” Brushing past her, he’d headed into the hospital to check on the daughter he intended to let his wife kill.

There was another smile, small and close-mouthed. In his wake, she’d stood alone while she imagined what it would feel like to chase after him, take him by the sweater and shake him. Instead, she swallowed. She tilted her head back against the tears that threatened and she walked to her car quickly as she could without breaking into a run. 

She cried in the car; hit her steering wheel so hard in anger that she bruised the heel of her palm. It took weeks to heal and even in the immediate aftermath, as soon as she’d turned it over to inspect the throbbing (a little surprised by herself) it was welting red. 

The drive home from the hospital was short and that’s all she remembers of it. Well, that and the feeling of distance. As if she were sitting beside herself the whole way home. That stayed with her though even when she arrived. 

Even when she went to the bathroom and splashed cool water across her face. Even as she brewed a pot of coffee. Even as she fished the bottle out of her purse. Klonopin, her doctor had explained, would take the edge off. She chased it with her coffee. A few minutes later she felt the beginning of settling, of returning to herself. 

Then it was cigarette after cigarette, call after call. The only nurse who’d been willing to help her had been fired. Malpractice. Beautiful Adora, sweet Adora, poor, poor Adora had convinced the whole town. Everyone believed her. Who could blame them? It was nicer to believe in the martyr mother. That story sits better. 

But Jackie knew, couldn’t be certain, but she knew: Adora’s going to kill that little girl. 

The thought made her sick and the sick sat in her belly; stewing, roiling, ‘til she felt like she might vomit. No one could help her. No one would help her. No one really liked her. Not as much as they liked adora and that was all it came down to in this goddamn town: how well liked you were. 

The Kolonopin hadn’t done enough, she decided when the tears refreshed. She got up and went to the wet bar to slip a little Jameson into her coffee. Settling back down at the dining table in front of the corded phone she’d brought in from the living room. She lit another cigarette.

The sound of the door had startled her, she’d nearly spilled her drink and dropped her cigarette. Douglas didn’t greet her at the door anymore. If he could find a way around it, she was sure that he’d have found a way to avoid greeting her at all. Still, she was relieved when crossed into the dining room from the hall. His head was low and his feet moved slowly. 

“I’m so glad you’re home. I had the most –” Stupid but she hoped for a little compassion.Maybe they didn’t love each other the way that a married people should but he’d once been her best friend, her confidant, the person to whom she was most loyal. 

“Do you wanna tell me why Vickery came by my office today and told me I ought to keep you on a leash?” Another round of tears sprung up to hang around her waterline borne of the anger in his voice. She blinked against the tears. 

“I don’t –” 

“No, I think you do, Jackie. I asked you, I begged you to give this shit up months ago. For christ’s sake.” Douglas went to pour himself a drink. Even in spite of the way that the world had slowed down, courtesy of her own, the way that he slammed down the bottle, his glass made her jump at the sound. She wouldn’t see until morning how much of it he’d spilled. 

“I give you -- everything. Everything that you could ever want for and all I ask in return is that you do what I say. Do you have any idea how this makes us look?”

Jackie didn’t answer. Had only stared guiltily down at the table, giving way to tears for the second time in a day. she hated to cry. Couldn’t stand to show any weakness, not even with her husband; but she was overfull, overtired, and so sick. Sick to her stomach. It hurt more and more. 

“Fucking hell – you know when I told Mama we were engaged she warned me that you’d be nothing but trouble.” Half to himself, he takes a generous pull from his glass. She still can’t bring herself to speak. Jackie o’neil, speechless and reduced to tears. she’s never felt so humiliated in her whole life. Well, in her adult life at least.

“She’s going to kill her, Doug.” When she finally spoke she had to work to keep her voice even and even then it still broke. It still sounded like pleading. “She’s just a baby.” 

Douglas was quiet a long time. His head bowed, back turned to her. She watched the steady rise and fall of his shoulders, watched him trying to control his breathing. He was a big man. broad-shouldered and strong. Not handsome but good; or so she’d thought. “Yeah. Not your baby, Jackie.” Under his breath. He didn’t turn around. She didn’t know whether or not it was meant to hurt her as much as it had.

“Give it up. Who the fuck’s gonna believe you, anyway? You’re making us both look like crazy people.” It’s probably wishful thinking on her part but Jackie interpreted the lowness of his voice, the flat monotone, the thinness as guilt. Doug drained the rest of his drink so quickly that even watching it nearly made her heave. Then he turned to leave. 

She didn’t move, hardly even dared to take a breath until she heard his car rev to start, that gravelly sound. She stood up. She wiped her cheeks on the back of her hand, sobbing like a little girl. She took the whisky with her to her bedroom. she already knew that tomorrow she wouldn’t make another call. 

She already knew that tomorrow she wouldn’t go back to the hospital. She’d lay low for a couple of weeks. she’d show adora what a good girl she could really be. She would let Adora do as she pleased with her daughter because Doug was right. 

Who the fuck was gonna believe her?


End file.
